Dogs and the Bible

Odyssey Truett, a Springer Spaniel, comments on the Bible's negativity about dogs.

(Hat tip to Ed Babinski.)

Mel Gibson arrested for DUI

Mel Gibson, whose idiotic views on evolution and the role of women resulted in more hits to this blog than any other post, was arrested in Malibu on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Luskin vs. Judge Jones on peer-reviewed publications supporting ID

Casey Luskin, responding to a point in a book review by John Derbyshire, argues that Judge Jones was incorrect in his decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover when he wrote that Intelligent Design is not supported by any peer-reviewed publications.

As Wesley Elsberry shows, Luskin's argument is not with Jones but with the defense in the Dover case, and in particular with the testimony of Michael Behe, who agreed in cross-examination that "there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred."

Q. [Rothschild] Now you have never argued for intelligent design in a peer reviewed scientific journal, correct?

A. [Behe] No, I argued for it in my book.

Q. Not in a peer reviewed scientific journal?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And, in fact, there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred, is that correct?

A. That is correct, yes.

Jones had to make his decision on the basis of the evidence presented in his court, not on the basis of Luskin's list of publications. Of the documents Luskin lists in refutation of Jones' statements, one of them, a paper by Behe and Snoke, was addressed specifically in the case, and it did not support intelligent design. As Ed Brayton and others have pointed out, in cross-examination in the Dover trial it came out that the Behe and Snoke paper actually is strong evidence against the existence of irreducible complexity. (The Ed Brayton post may also now be found at scienceblogs.com.)

Luskin's list of alleged peer-reviewed publications supporting intelligent design hasn't undergone cross-examination in court (except for Behe and Snoke, the treatment of which in the trial Luskin fails to address). Were the publications introduced into the trial, there is little doubt that they would similarly have been torn apart due to lack of proper peer review, lack of original research, and lack of support for intelligent design, as has already occurred at the TalkOrigins site which Luskin links to (but fails to engage with).

9th Circuit approves random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that border police have the right to conduct random warrantless searches and seizures of laptops--including full forensic disk examination.

I recommend using full-disk encryption.

Hat tip to The Agitator.

VoIP quality degradation shows need for prioritization

A study by Brix Networks, which runs TestYourVoip.com, shows that the quality of VoIP calls has degraded over the last 18 months. Their tests of VoIP connections show that 20 percent of calls have unacceptable quality, up from 15% 18 months ago. Brix's CTO says that the cause is competition for network resources--i.e., congestion.

The solution is, of course, prioritization--putting voice and other latency and jitter-sensitive traffic in a higher class of service with QoS (quality of service).

Thanks to Matt Sherman for the link.

Further comments on the subject may be found at Richard Bennett's Original Blog and by James Gattuso at the Technology Liberation Front.

Tucson #7 most overpriced city on Forbes list

Tucson made Forbes' list of the top 10 most overpriced cities in the United States for 2006 at #7. The list is based on the largest 112 metro areas in Forbes' 2006 list of best places for business and careers, ranking them based on job growth, cost of living, housing affordability, and salaries. The ten most overpriced locations have the highest costs of living, lowest housing affordability, least job growth, and lowest salaries.

1. Essex County, Massachusetts
2. San Francisco, California
3. San Jose, California
4. Honolulu, Hawaii
5. Cambridge, Massachusetts
6. New York City, New York
7. Tucson, Arizona
8. Oakland, California
9. Boston, Massachusetts
10. Los Angeles, California

Judge throws out ACLU lawsuit against NSA

While the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T continues, U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly today threw out the ACLU's lawsuit against the National Security Agency for collecting call detail records from AT&T, MCI, and other providers (though not, apparently, from Verizon or BellSouth).

Visual representation of global data

This is a very interesting presentation at Google by the folks at Gapminder, a Swedish nonprofit that is trying to provide better, visual ways of representing information about the state of the world. These are the same people who put together this set of excellent animated interactive presentations on human development trends (income levels, life expectancy, etc.) for the United Nations Development Program.

(Via Patri Friedman at Catallarchy.)

Scale model of disputed Chinese-Indian mountain range in China

On Google Earth or at The Register. (Via Anson Kennedy on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

Court rejects government's "state secrets" argument in AT&T case

Today Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California ruled on the U.S. government's motions for dismissal or summary judgment in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T on grounds of "state secrets." The motions were denied, with the possibility of a later dismissal or summary judgment on state secrets grounds. However, the judge noted the limits of state secrets privilege with respect to the infringement of individual rights, and stated that "dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security" (p. 36 of the ruling).

The judge noted that you can't claim that something is a "state secret" if it's not secret, citing not only news stories about interception but public statements by George W. Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

Also denied were AT&T's motions for dismiss for lack of standing, for lack of plaintiff demonstration that AT&T lack's appropriate government certification for its actions (though the judge indicates he could be persuaded otherwise on this one later), due to AT&T's claim of common law immunity from civil liability for conducting government surveillance (in part because AT&T has argued that its cooperation has been voluntary, not mandatory), and due to AT&T's claim of qualified immunity.

The judge proposes appointing a qualified, appropriately security-cleared expert to assist the court in reviewing classified material and determining what may be disclosed and to whom.

The next hearing is a case management hearing on August 8.